A Large-scale Systematic Exploration of the Impact of Culturally Competent Biology Education

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Undergraduate biology education touches on a variety of topics that may counter cultural beliefs held by undergraduate students. Although these topics are supported by widely accepted scientific theories, many college students are uncomfortable learning about them. Past research illustrates that differences between instructors' and students' beliefs may result in biology instructors teaching in ways that are not culturally sensitive to student beliefs. Cultural competence is the ability of one group of people to effectively communicate to other groups of people who may have different cultural backgrounds and beliefs. Although there are instructional practices that have been proposed to be culturally competent when teaching about these topics, there are few rigorous studies that sufficiently test the effectiveness of these practices and none examine multiple instructors and/or institutions. For this project, a large-scale nationwide study will be conducted to explore if and when Culturally Competent Practices (CCPs) can (1) create more comfortable learning environments for college students, (2) reduce students' perceived conflicts between their beliefs and biology, and (3) improve student understanding of biological theories. Including CCPs in the teaching of biology will lead to a better educated citizenry, specifically to a better understanding of the scientific process, which is in the national interest.Although a large number of published studies recommend CCPs in biology instruction, very few use data to support their recommendations and no studies use a pre-/post-measurement design with a comparison group of students not exposed to CCPs. Additionally, there is currently no systematic and standardized way to measure the use of CCPs and there is also wide variation in the measurement of student outcomes, which make comparisons among published studies difficult and generalizations nearly impossible. Notably, there have been no large-scale studies done to try to compare the efficacy of CCPs in multiple settings. This project aims to address these gaps and to develop survey instruments to deploy in a large-scale national study to systematically measure the impact of CCPs on undergraduates learning about biology. The project will develop surveys to measure instructor use of CCPs in biology instruction and student outcomes resulting from incorporation of CCPs. Three potential student outcomes will be addressed: (1) student perceived comfort in their biology learning environment, (2) student perceived conflict between their beliefs and biological theories, and (3) student acceptance of the tenets of biology. At least 54 life science instructors teaching over 11,000 students in 84 courses will participate in the study and deploy the student survey instrument, making this one of the largest studies conducted on undergraduate biology education to date. The project will use natural variation between instructors in the use of CCPs in biology instruction to systematically test the impact of CCPs on student outcomes. The overarching focus of this proposal is to explore the use of CCPs, which if shown to be effective, could help make biology classrooms more inclusive, particularly for students with strongly held cultural or religious beliefs, who comprise a large fraction of undergraduate biology students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.